Officials with Danbury's Boehringer Ingelheim announced Wednesday the pharmaceutical company has agreed to pay $650 million to settle thousands of state and federal lawsuits questioning the safety and marketing of its blood-thinning drug Pradaxa.

Attorneys involved in more than 4,000 lawsuits against the company have claimed that Boehringer Ingelheim failed to properly warn patients of the risks, including potential fatal bleeding episodes, involved in taking the drug. Pradaxa, which has no known reversal agent, was approved by the FDA in 2010 to reduce the risk of strokes in patients with irregular heartbeats.

Despite the settlement, company officials said Wednesday they continue to stand behind Pradaxa and they will vigorously defend against any plaintiffs who fail to accept the settlement.

"Time and time again, the benefits and safety of Pradaxa have been confirmed," Desiree Ralls-Morrison, senior vice president and general counsel for the company, said in a statement announcing the settlement Wednesday. "Boehringer Ingelheim stands resolutely behind Pradaxa and believed from the outset that the plaintiffs' claims lacked merit."

Ralls-Morrison added that while the company believes it would have prevailed in the lawsuits, the settlement allows Boehringer Ingelheim to "avoid the distraction and uncertainty of lengthy litigation and focus on our mission of improving patients' lives."

Mikal Watts, the co-lead counsel for all the plaintiffs, said the agreement represents a fair settlement for all those who were harmed while taking the drug.

"This is a robust amount of money for the people who really need it," he said. "The company should be congratulated for stepping up and doing the right thing."

Watts said Boehringer Ingelheim officials could have dragged kept the lawsuit tied up in court for the next few years in hopes that many of the older plaintiffs would die before the trial.

"Instead, they sat down and negotiated a fair resolution," he said.

Watts said while no reversal agent for Pradaxa is on the market today, company officials are working on it.

"I'd like it to be out now but it will be out soon," he said.

Mary Lewis, a spokeswoman for the drug company, said they began developing the reversal agent several years ago and began testing it last year in healthy human volunteers. The next stage of development, which includes trials outside the United States with Pradaxa patients, is in the works.

"The sites have already been identified," she said.

The company's announcement comes a week after the FDA issued a statement regarding its ongoing review of Pradaxa that includes more than 134,000 Medicare patients.

The study has found that "Pradaxa was associated with a lower risk of clot-related strokes, bleeding in the brain, and death, than warfarin," according to the May 13 statement from the Fod and Drug Administration. "As a result of our latest findings, we still consider Pradaxa to have a favorable benefit to risk profile and have made no changes to the current label or recommendations for use."